George Washington Carver (c. 1864[1] – January 5, 1943) was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion.[2] He was one of the most prominent black scientists of the early 20th century.
While a professor at Tuskegee Institute, Carver developed techniques to improve types of soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. He wanted poor farmers to grow other crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, as a source of their own food and to improve their quality of life.[3] Under his leadership, the Experiment Station at Tuskegee published over forty practical bulletins for farmers, many written by him, which included recipes; many of the bulletins contained advice for poor farmers, including combating soil depletion with limited financial means, producing bigger crops, and preserving food.
Apart from his work to improve the lives of farmers, Carver was also a leader in promoting environmentalism.[4] He received numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP. In an era of high racial polarization, his fame reached beyond the black community. He was widely recognized and praised in the white community for his many achievements and talents. In 1941, Time magazine dubbed Carver a "Black Leonardo".[5]
Color film of Carver shot in 1937 at the Tuskegee Institute by African American surgeon Allen Alexander was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2019.[6][7] The 12 minutes of footage includes Carver in his apartment, office and laboratory, as well as images of him tending flowers and displaying his paintings.
Early years
The farmhouse of Moses Carver (built in 1881), near the place where George Carver lived as a youth
Carver was born into slavery, in Diamond Grove, (now Diamond, Newton County, Missouri), near Crystal Palace, sometime in the early 1860s. The date of his birth is uncertain and was not known to Carver because it was before slavery was abolished in Missouri, which occurred in January 1865, during the American Civil War. His enslaver, Moses Carver, was a German American immigrant, who had purchased George's parents, Mary and Giles, from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855, for $700 (~$18,133 in 2023).[3][8][1]
Giles died before George was born and when he was a week old, he, his sister, and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders from Arkansas. George's brother, James, was rushed to safety from the kidnappers. The kidnappers sold the trio in Kentucky. Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find them, but he found only the infant George. Moses negotiated with the raiders to gain the boy's return and rewarded Bentley. After slavery was abolished, Moses Carver and his wife, Susan, raised George and his older brother, James, as their own children. They encouraged George to continue his intellectual pursuits, and "Aunt Susan" taught him the basics of reading and writing.[9]
Black people were not allowed at the public school in Diamond Grove. George decided to go to a school for black children 10 miles (16km) south, in Neosho. When he reached the town, he found the school closed for the night. He slept in a nearby barn. By his own account, the next morning he met a kind woman, Mariah Watkins, from whom he wished to rent a room. When he identified himself as "Carver's George", as he had done his whole life, she replied that from now on his name was "George Carver". George liked Mariah Watkins and her words, "You must learn all you can, then go back out into the world and give your learning back to the people", made a great impression on him.[10]
At age 13, because he wanted to attend the academy there, he moved to the home of another foster family, in Fort Scott, Kansas.[11] After witnessing the killing of a black man by a group of white people, Carver left the city. He attended a series of schools before earning his diploma at Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas.[12]
During his time spent in Minneapolis, there was another George Carver in town, which caused confusion over receiving mail. Carver chose a middle initial at random and began requesting letters to him be addressed to George W. Carver. Someone once asked if the "W" stood for Washington, and Carver grinned and said, "Why not?" However, he never used Washington as his middle name, and signed his name as either George W. Carver or simply George Carver.[13]
Carver applied to several colleges before being accepted at Highland University in Highland, Kansas. When he arrived, they refused to let him attend because of his race.[14][15] In August 1886, Carver traveled by wagon with J. F. Beeler from Highland to Eden Township in Ness County, Kansas.[16] He homesteaded a claim[17] near Beeler, where he maintained a small conservatory of plants and flowers and a geological collection. He manually plowed 17 acres (69,000m2) of the claim, planting rice, corn, Indian corn and garden produce, as well as various fruit trees, forest trees, and shrubbery. He also earned money by odd jobs in town and worked as a ranch hand.[16]
In early 1888, Carver obtained a $300 (~$10,173 in 2023) loan at the Bank of Ness City for education. By June he left the area.[16] In 1890, Carver started studying art and piano at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa.[18] His art teacher, Etta Budd, recognized Carver's talent for painting flowers and plants; she encouraged him to study botany at Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in Ames.[18]
When he began there in 1891, he was the first black student at Iowa State.[19] Carver's bachelor's thesis for a degree in Agriculture was "Plants as Modified by Man", dated 1894.[20][21] Iowa State University professors Joseph Budd and Louis Pammel convinced Carver to continue there for his master's degree.[19] Carver did research at the Iowa Experiment Station under Pammel during the next two years. His work at the experiment station in plant pathology and mycology first gained him national recognition and respect as a botanist. Carver received his Master of Science degree in 1896.[21] Carver taught as the first African American faculty member at Iowa State.[22]
Despite occasionally being addressed as "doctor", Carver never received an official doctorate, and in a personal communication with Pammel, he noted that it was a "misnomer", given to him by others due to his abilities and their assumptions about his education.[23] Though he did not have an earned doctorate, both Simpson College and Selma University awarded him honorarydoctorates of science in his lifetime.[23][24] In addition, Iowa State awarded him a posthumous doctor of humane letters degree in 1994.[25]
In 1896, Booker T. Washington, the first principal and president of the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), invited Carver to head its Agriculture Department.[3] Carver taught there for 47 years, developing the department into a strong research center and working with two additional college presidents during his tenure. He taught methods of crop rotation, introduced several alternative cash crops for farmers that would also improve the soil of areas heavily cultivated in cotton, initiated research into crop products (chemurgy), and taught generations of black students farming techniques for self-sufficiency.[26]
Carver designed a mobile classroom to take education out to farmers. He called it a "Jesup wagon" after the New York financier and philanthropistMorris Ketchum Jesup, who provided funding to support the program.[27]
To recruit Carver to Tuskegee, Washington gave him an above average salary and two rooms for his personal use, although both concessions were resented by some other faculty. Because he had earned a master's in a scientific field from a "white" institution, some faculty perceived him as arrogant.[28] Unmarried faculty members normally had to share rooms, with two to a room, in the spartan early days of the institute.
One of Carver's duties was to administer the Agricultural Experiment Station farms. He had to manage the production and sale of farm products to generate revenue for the institute. He soon proved to be a poor administrator and clashed with other faculty members, especially George Ruffin Bridgeforth.[29] In 1900, Carver complained that the physical work and the letter-writing required were too much.[30]
In 1904, an Institute committee reported that Carver's reports on yields from the poultry yard were exaggerated, and Washington confronted Carver about the issue. Carver replied in writing, "Now to be branded as a liar and party to such hellish deception it is more than I can bear, and if your committee feel that I have willfully lied or [was] party to such lies as were told my resignation is at your disposal."[31] During Washington's last five years at Tuskegee, Carver submitted or threatened his resignation several times: when the administration reorganized the agriculture programs,[32] when he disliked a teaching assignment,[33] to manage an experiment station elsewhere,[34] and when he did not get summer teaching assignments in 1913–14.[35][36] In each case, Washington smoothed things over.
Carver started his academic career as a researcher and teacher. In 1911, Washington wrote a letter to him complaining that Carver had not followed orders to plant particular crops at the experiment station. This revealed Washington's micro-management of Carver's department, which he had headed for more than 10 years by then. Washington at the same time refused Carver's requests for a new laboratory, research supplies for his exclusive use, and respite from teaching classes. Washington praised Carver's abilities in teaching and original research but said this about his administrative skills:
When it comes to the organization of classes, the ability required to secure a properly organized and large school or section of a school, you are wanting in ability. When it comes to the matter of practical farm managing which will secure definite, practical, financial results, you are wanting again in ability.
In 1911, Carver complained that his laboratory had not received the equipment which Washington had promised 11 months before. He also complained about Institute committee meetings.[37] Washington praised Carver in his 1911 memoir, My Larger Education: Being Chapters from My Experience.[38] Washington called Carver "one of the most thoroughly scientific men of the Negro race with whom I am acquainted".[39] After Washington died in 1915, his successor made fewer demands on Carver for administrative tasks.
From 1915 to 1923, Carver concentrated on researching and experimenting with new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans, pecans, and other crops, as well as having his assistants research and compile existing uses.[40] This work, and especially his speaking to a national conference of the Peanut Growers Association in 1920 and in testimony before Congress in 1921 to support passage of a tariff on imported peanuts, brought him wide publicity and increasing renown. In these years, he became one of the most well-known African Americans of his time.
Rise to fame
"One of America's great scientists" – one of several Carver-centric posters by C. H. Alston, this one referencing the World War II effort (circa 1943)
Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. Together with other agricultural experts, he urged farmers to restore nitrogen to their soils by practicing systematic crop rotation: alternating cotton crops with plantings of sweet potatoes or legumes, such as peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas. These crops both restored nitrogen to the soil and were good for human consumption.
Following the crop rotation practice resulted in improved cotton yields and gave farmers alternative cash crops. To train farmers to successfully rotate and cultivate the new crops, Carver developed an agricultural extension program for Alabama that was similar to the one at Iowa State. To encourage better nutrition in the South, he widely distributed recipes using the alternative crops.
He founded an industrial research laboratory, where he and assistants worked to popularize the new crops by developing hundreds of applications for them. They did original research as well as promoting applications and recipes, which they collected from others. Carver distributed his information as agricultural bulletins.
Carver's work was known by officials in the national capital before he became a public figure. President Theodore Roosevelt publicly admired his work. Former professors of Carver's from Iowa State University were appointed to positions as Secretary of Agriculture: James Wilson, a former dean and professor of Carver's, served from 1897 to 1913. Henry Cantwell Wallace served from 1921 to 1924. He knew Carver personally because his son Henry A. Wallace and the researcher were friends.[41] The younger Wallace served as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1933 to 1940, and as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vice president from 1941 to 1945.
In 1916, Carver was made a member of the Royal Society of Arts in England, one of only a handful of Americans at that time to receive this honor. Carver's promotion of peanuts gained him the most notice.
By 1920, the U.S. peanut farmers were being undercut by low prices on imported peanuts from the Republic of China.[43] In 1921, peanut farmers and industry representatives planned to appear at Congressional hearings to ask for a tariff.[44] Based on the quality of Carver's presentation at their convention, they asked the African-American professor to testify on the tariff issue before the Ways and Means Committee of the United States House of Representatives.[44] Due to segregation, it was highly unusual for an African American to appear as an expert witness, but Carver appeared and unpacked numerous exhibits and samples to make his case for greater food and industrial uses for the peanut.[44] Southern congressmen mocked him, but as he talked about the importance of the peanut and its uses for American agriculture and manufacturing, committee members repeatedly extended the time for his testimony.[45] The Fordney–McCumber Tariff was enacted in 1922, and included a duty on imported peanuts.[46] Carver's testimony, including samples of peanut milk, peanut flour, industrial dyes made from peanuts, and other peanut-based products, made him widely known as a public figure.[46]
During the last two decades of his life, Carver seemed to enjoy his celebrity status. He was often on the road promoting Tuskegee University, peanuts, sweet potatoes, and racial harmony. Although he only published six agricultural bulletins after 1922, he published articles in peanut industry journals and wrote a syndicated newspaper column, "Professor Carver's Advice". Business leaders came to seek his help, and he often responded with free advice. Three American presidents—Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt—met with him, and the Crown Prince of Sweden studied with him for three weeks. From 1923 to 1933, Carver toured white Southern colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation.[40]
With his increasing notability, Carver became the subject of biographies and articles. Raleigh H. Merritt contacted him for his biography published in 1929. Merritt wrote:
At present not a great deal has been done to utilize Dr. Carver's discoveries commercially. He says that he is merely scratching the surface of scientific investigations of the possibilities of the peanut and other Southern products.[47]
In 1932, the writer James Saxon Childers wrote that Carver and his peanut products were almost solely responsible for the rise in U.S. peanut production after the boll weevil devastated the American cotton crop beginning about 1892. His article, "A Boy Who Was Traded for a Horse" (1932), in The American Magazine, and its 1937 reprint in Reader's Digest, contributed to this myth about Carver's influence. Other popular media tended to exaggerate Carver's impact on the peanut industry.[48]
From 1933 to 1935, Carver worked to develop peanut oil massages to treat infantile paralysis (polio).[40] Ultimately, researchers found that the massages, not the peanut oil, provided the benefits of maintaining some mobility to paralyzed limbs.
From 1935 to 1937, Carver participated in the USDA Disease Survey. Carver had specialized in plant diseases and mycology for his master's degree.
In 1937, Carver attended two chemurgy conferences, an emerging field in the 1930s, during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, concerned with developing new products from crops.[40] He was invited by Henry Ford to speak at the conference held in Dearborn, Michigan, and they developed a friendship. That year Carver's health declined, and Ford later installed an elevator at the Tuskegee dormitory where Carver lived, so that the elderly man would not have to climb stairs.[5][49]
Carver had been frugal in his life, and in his seventies he established a legacy by creating a museum of his work, as well as the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee in 1938 to continue agricultural research. He donated nearly US$60,000(equivalent to $1,298,723 in 2023) in his savings to create the foundation.[49]
Carver headed the modern organic movement in the southern agricultural system.[50] Carver's background for his interest in organic farming sprouted from his father being killed during the Civil War, and when his mother was kidnapped by Confederate slave raiders. Now an orphan, Carver found comfort in botany when he was just 11 years old in Kansas. Carver learned about herbal medicine, natural pesticides, and natural fertilizers that yielded plentiful crops from his caretaker. When crops and house plants were dying, he would use his knowledge and go and nurse them back to health. As a teenager, he was termed the "plant doctor".
When his study about infection in soybean reached Booker T. Washington, he invited him to come and teach at the Tuskegee Agricultural school.
Although the emancipation allowed Black families 40 acres and a mule, President Johnson revoked this and gave the land to white plantation owners instead. This prompted Black farmers to exchange what was once their land, and in turn, a small part of the land's harvest. This led to sharecropping.[51] Carver soon realized that farmers were not obtaining enough food to survive, and how the industrialization of cotton had contaminated the soil.[52]
Carver wanted to find a way to organically transform Alabama's failing soil. He found that alternating nitrogen-rich crops would let the soil get back to its natural state. Keeping crops like sweet potatoes, peanuts, and cowpeas would produce more food surplus and different types of food for farmers. Carver worked to pioneer organic fertilizers like swamp muck and compost for the farmers to use. These fertilizers were more sustainable to the planet and helped farmers to spend less money on fertilizers since they were recycling products.[52]
Carver pushed for woodland preservation, to help improve the quality of the topsoil. He urged farmers to feed their hogs acorns. The acorns contained natural pesticides and feeding them acorns was cheaper for the farms too.[53] Carver's efforts towards the holistic and organic approach are still in practice today. In his research, Carver discovered Permaculture. Permaculture could be used to produce carbon from the atmosphere, produce a higher quantity of crops, and let crops flourish despite global warming.
Relationships
"Austin Curtis – Scientist successor to Dr. Carver", cartoon by C. H. Alston
Carver never married. At age 40, he began a courtship with Sarah L. Hunt, an elementary school teacher and the sister-in-law of Warren Logan, Treasurer of Tuskegee Institute. This lasted three years until she took a teaching job in California.[54] In her 2015 biography, Christina Vella reviews his relationships and suggests that Carver was bisexual and constrained by mores of his historic period.[55]
When he was 70, Carver established a friendship and research partnership with the scientist Austin W. Curtis Jr. This young black man, a graduate of Cornell University, had some teaching experience before coming to Tuskegee. Carver bequeathed to Curtis his royalties from an authorized 1943 biography by Rackham Holt.[56] After Carver died in 1943, Curtis was fired from Tuskegee Institute. He left Alabama and resettled in Detroit. There he manufactured and sold peanut-based personal care products.[57]
Death
Upon returning home one day, Carver suffered a bad fall down a flight of stairs; he was found unconscious by a maid who took him to a hospital. Carver died January 5, 1943, at the age of 78 or 79 from complications (anemia) resulting from this fall.[58] His death came when he was sitting up in bed while painting a Christmas card which said, “Peace on earth and goodwill to all men.” Carver biographer Prema Ramakrishnan said of him that "His death was characteristic of him and his entire life’s work."[59][60] He was buried next to Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee University. Due to his frugality, Carver's life savings totaled $60,000, all of which he donated in his last years and at his death to the Carver Museum and to the George Washington Carver Foundation.[61]
On his grave was written, "He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world."[62]
Personal life
Christianity
Carver believed he could have faith both in God and science and integrated them into his life. He testified on many occasions that his faith in Jesus was the only mechanism by which he could effectively pursue and perform the art of science.[63] Carver became a Christian when he was still a young boy, as he wrote in connection to his conversion in 1931:[64]
I was just a mere boy when converted, hardly ten years old. There isn't much of a story to it. God just came into my heart one afternoon while I was alone in the 'loft' of our big barn while I was shelling corn to carry to the mill to be ground into meal.
A dear little white boy, one of our neighbors, about my age came by one Saturday morning, and in talking and playing he told me he was going to Sunday school tomorrow morning. I was eager to know what a Sunday school was. He said they sang hymns and prayed. I asked him what prayer was and what they said. I do not remember what he said; only remember that as soon as he left I climbed up into the 'loft,' knelt down by the barrel of corn and prayed as best I could. I do not remember what I said. I only recall that I felt so good that I prayed several times before I quit.
My brother and myself were the only colored children in that neighborhood and of course, we could not go to church or Sunday school, or school of any kind.
That was my simple conversion, and I have tried to keep the faith.
—G. W. Carver; Letter to Isabelle Coleman; July 24, 1931
He was not expected to live past his 21st birthday due to failing health. He lived well past the age of 21, and his belief deepened as a result.[39] Throughout his career, he always found friendship with other Christians. He relied on them especially when criticized by the scientific community and media regarding his research methodology.[65][full citation needed]
Carver viewed faith in Jesus Christ as a means of destroying both barriers of racial disharmony and social stratification.[66] He was as concerned with his students' character development as he was with their intellectual development. He compiled a list of "eight cardinal virtues" whose possession defines "a lady or a gentleman":
A monument to Carver at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis
Be clean both inside and out.
Who neither looks up to the rich nor down on the poor.
Who loses, if needs be, without squealing.
Who wins without bragging.
Who is always considerate of women, children and old people.
Who is too brave to lie.
Who is too generous to cheat.
Who take his share of the world and lets other people have theirs.[67]
Beginning in 1906 at Tuskegee, Carver led a Bible class on Sundays for several students at their request. He regularly portrayed stories by acting them out.[68]
Voice pitch
Even as an adult Carver spoke with a high pitch. Historian Linda O. McMurry noted that he "was a frail and sickly child" who suffered "from a severe case of whooping cough and frequent bouts of what was called croup".[69] McMurry contested the diagnosis of croup, holding rather that "His stunted growth and apparently impaired vocal cords suggest instead tubercular or pneumococcal infection. Frequent infections of that nature could have caused the growth of polyps on the larynx and may have resulted from a gamma globulin deficiency.... until his death the high pitch of his voice startled all who met him, and he suffered from frequent chest congestion and loss of voice."[69]
A movement to establish a U.S. national monument to Carver began before his death. Because of World War II, such non-war expenditures had been banned by presidential order. Missouri senator Harry S. Truman sponsored a bill in favor of a monument. In a committee hearing on the bill, one supporter said:
The bill is not simply a momentary pause on the part of busy men engaged in the conduct of the war, to do honor to one of the truly great Americans of this country, but it is in essence a blow against the Axis, it is in essence a war measure in the sense that it will further unleash and release the energies of roughly 15,000,000 Negro people in this country for full support of our war effort.[40]
The bill passed unanimously in both houses.
On July 14, 1943,[83] President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated $30,000 (~$422,592 in 2023) for the George Washington Carver National Monument west-southwest of Diamond, Missouri, the area where Carver had spent time in his childhood. This was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and the first to honor someone other than a president. The 210-acre (0.8km2)national monument complex includes a bust of Carver, a 3⁄4-mile nature trail, a museum, the 1881 Moses Carver house, and the Carver cemetery. The national monument opened in July 1953.
In December 1947, a fire broke out in the Carver Museum, and much of the collection was damaged. Time magazine reported that all but 3 of the 48 Carver paintings at the museum were destroyed. His best-known painting, displayed at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, depicts a yucca and cactus. This canvas survived and has undergone conservation. It is displayed together with several of his other paintings.[84] Carver was featured on U.S. 1948 commemorative stamps. From 1951 to 1954, he was depicted on the commemorative Carver-Washington half dollar coin along with Booker T. Washington. A second stamp honoring Carver, of face value 32¢, was issued on February 3, 1998, as part of the Celebrate the Century stamp sheet series. Two ships, the Liberty shipSS George Washington Carver and the nuclear submarineUSS George Washington Carver (SSBN-656), were named in his honor.
In 2005, Carver's research at the Tuskegee Institute was designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society.[87] On February 15, 2005, an episode of Modern Marvels included scenes from within Iowa State University's Food Sciences Building and about Carver's work. In 2005, the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri, opened a George Washington Carver garden in his honor, which includes a life-size statue of him.
Many institutions continue to honor George Washington Carver. Dozens of elementary schools and high schools are named after him. National Basketball Association star David Robinson and his wife, Valerie, founded an academy named after Carver; it opened on September 17, 2001, in San Antonio, Texas.[68] The Carver Community Cultural Center, a historic center located in San Antonio, is named for him.
Reputed inventions
Carver has been given credit in popular folklore for many inventions that did not come out of his lab. Three patents (one for cosmetics; US 1522176,issued January 6, 1925, and two for paints and stains; US 1541478,issued June 9, 1925, and US 1632365,issued June 14, 1927) were issued to Carver in 1925 to 1927; however, they were not commercially successful.[88]
Aside from these patents and some recipes for food, Carver left no records of formulae or procedures for making his products. He did not keep a laboratory notebook. Mackintosh notes that, "Carver did not explicitly claim that he had personally discovered all the peanut attributes and uses he cited, but he said nothing to prevent his audiences from drawing the inference."[89]
Carver's research was intended to produce replacements from common crops for commercial products, which were generally beyond the budget of the small one-horse farmer. A misconception grew that his research on products for subsistence farmers were developed by others commercially to change Southern agriculture.[90][91] Carver's work to provide small farmers with resources for more independence from the cash economy foreshadowed the "appropriate technology" work of E. F. Schumacher.
Carver worked on improving soils, growing crops with low inputs, and using species that fixed nitrogen (hence, the work on the cowpea and the peanut). Carver wrote in 'The Need of Scientific Agriculture in the South': "The virgin fertility of our soils and the vast amount of unskilled labor have been more of a curse than a blessing to agriculture. This exhaustive system for cultivation, the destruction of forest, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, have made our agricultural problem one requiring more brains than of the North, East or West.[92]
Carver worked for years to create a company to market his products. The most important was the Carver Penol Company, which sold a mixture of creosote and peanuts as a patent medicine for respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis. Sales were lackluster and the product was ineffective according to the Food and Drug Administration.[93] Other ventures were The Carver Products Company and the Carvoline Company. Carvoline Antiseptic Hair Dressing was a mix of peanut oil and lanolin. Carvoline Rubbing Oil was a peanut oil for massages.
Carver is often mistakenly credited with the invention of peanut butter.[94] By the time Carver published "How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it For Human Consumption" in 1916,[95] many methods of preparation of peanut butter had been developed or patented by various pharmacists, doctors and food scientists working in the US and Canada.[96][97][98] The Aztecs were known to have made peanut butter from ground peanuts as early as the 15th century. Canadian pharmacist Marcellus Gilmore Edson was awarded U.S. patent 306,727 (for its manufacture) in 1884, 12 years before Carver began his work at Tuskegee.[99][100]
Sweet potato products
Carver is also associated with developing sweet potato products. In his 1922 sweet potato bulletin, Carver listed a few dozen recipes, "many of which I have copied verbatim from Bulletin No. 129, U. S. Department of Agriculture".[101] Carver's records included the following sweet potato products: 73 dyes, 17 wood fillers, 14 candies, 5 library pastes, 5 breakfast foods, 4 starches, 4 flours, and 3 molasses.[102] He also had listings for vinegars, dry coffee and instant coffee, candy, after-dinner mints, orange drops, and lemon drops.
Carver bulletins
During his more than four decades at Tuskegee, Carver's official published work consisted mainly of 44 practical bulletins for farmers.[103] His first bulletin in 1898 was on feeding acorns to farm animals. His final bulletin in 1943 was about the peanut. He also published six bulletins on sweet potatoes, five on cotton, and four on cowpeas. Some other individual bulletins dealt with alfalfa, wild plum, tomato, ornamental plants, corn, poultry, dairying, hogs, preserving meats in hot weather, and nature study in schools.
His most popular bulletin, How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption, was first published in 1916[104] and has been reprinted numerous times. It provides a short overview of peanut crop production and contains a list of recipes from other agricultural bulletins, cookbooks, magazines, and newspapers, such as the Peerless Cookbook, Good Housekeeping, and Berry's Fruit Recipes. While Carver's was not the first American agricultural bulletin devoted to peanuts,[105][106][107][108][109] his bulletins seem to have been more popular and widespread than those that preceded his.
↑ Rackham Holt, George Washington Carver: An American Biography, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1943. Quote: "He [Carver] believed that there was something providential in the coming of this young man [Austin], so intensely serious about his work and extremely competent at it, who was at the same time a genial companion; he was proud of him and loved and depended on him as his own son... And the affection was returned in full measure. Mr. Curtis accompanied him everywhere, seeing to his comfort, shielding him from intrusion, and acting as his official mouthpiece."
↑ On Curtis' later life, see "Austin W. Curtis Interviewed by Toby Fishbein in Detroit, Michigan, March 3, 1979": Transcript in Iowa State University Special Collections, George Washington Carver File, Box 2, RS: 21/7/2.
↑ (Obituary)NEW YORK TIMES; "Dr. Carver is Dead; Negro Scientist" January 6, 1943
↑ Letter to a student, January 9, 1922, quoted in George Washington Carver, Gary R. Kremer, George Washington Carver: In His Own Words, 1987, ISBN0826207855, p. 85.
↑ Collins, Daniel J.; Frederick, Lafayette; Warren, Herman; Rossman, Amy; Dominick, Shannon (2014). "Contributions of Dr. George Washington Carver to global food security: Historical reflections of Dr. Carver's Fungal Plant Disease Survey in the southeastern United States". APSnet Features. doi:10.1094/APSFeature-2014-02.
Hersey, Mark D. My Work Is That of Conservation: An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver (University of Georgia Press; 2011) 306 pages.
Hersey, Mark. "Hints and Suggestions to Farmers: George Washington Carver and Rural Conservation in the South". Environmental History 11#2 (2006): 239–268.
Mackintosh, Barry. "George Washington Carver: The Making of a Myth". Journal of Southern History 42#4 (1976): 507–528. in JSTOR
Carver, George Washington. "1897 or Thereabouts: George Washington Carver's Own Brief History of His Life". George Washington Carver National Monument.
Collins, David R. George Washington Carver: Man's Slave, God's Scientist, (Mott Media, 1981)
William J. Federer, George Washington Carver: His Life & Faith in His Own Words, AmeriSearch (2003) ISBN0965355764
Kremer, G. R. ed. George Washington Carver: In His Own Words, University of Missouri Press; 1987, Reprint edition (1991) ISBN978-0826207852
H. M. Morris, Men of Science, Men of God (1982)
E. C. Barnett and D. Fisher, Scientists Who Believe (1984)
Further reading
Gray, James Marion. George Washington Carver. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Silver Burdett Press, 1991.
Holt, Rackham. George Washington Carver: An American Biography, rev. ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963.
Kremer, Gary R. Race and Meaning: The African American Experience in Missouri, University of Missouri Press, 2014.
McKissack, Pat, and Fredrick McKissack. George Washington Carver: The Peanut Scientist, rev. ed. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 2002.
Moore, Eva. The Story of George Washington Carver, New York: Scholastic, 1995.
Vella, Christina. Carver, Louisiana State University Press, 2015.
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.
The peanut, also known as the groundnut, goober (US), goober pea, pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics by small and large commercial producers, both as grain legume and as an oil crop. Atypically among legumes, peanut pods develop underground leading botanist Carl Linnaeus to name peanuts hypogaea, which means "under the earth".
Tuskegee is a city in Macon County, Alabama, United States. General Thomas Simpson Woodward, a Creek War veteran under Andrew Jackson, laid out the city and founded it in 1833. It became the county seat in the same year and it was incorporated in 1843. It is the most populous city in Macon County. At the 2020 census the population was 9,395, down from 9,865 in 2010 and 11,846 in 2000.
Agriculture is a major industry in the United States, which is a net exporter of food. As of the 2017 census of agriculture, there were 2.04 million farms, covering an area of 900 million acres (1,400,000 sq mi), an average of 441 acres per farm.
Peanut butter is a food paste or spread made from ground, dry-roasted peanuts. It commonly contains additional ingredients that modify the taste or texture, such as salt, sweeteners, or emulsifiers. Consumed in many countries, it is the most commonly used of the nut butters, a group that also includes cashew butter and almond butter.
Tuskegee University is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on July 4th in 1881 by the Alabama Legislature.
Frederick Douglass Patterson was an American academic administrator, the president of what is now Tuskegee University (1935–1953), and founder of the United Negro College Fund. He was a 1987 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, and 1988 recipient of the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.
Peanut milk is a plant milk, which is an alternative to animal milk. It is made with peanuts, water, and sometimes other additional ingredients like salt, sugar, or cinnamon. Peanut milk is high in fat and protein compared to other plant-based milks. This milk is sometimes used by people who identify with lactose intolerance, veganism, or a casein-free diet, as it has no lactose, but includes nutritional benefits like being high in magnesium, Vitamin E, Vitamin B-6, and protein.
Booker T. Whatley was an agriculture professor at Tuskegee University, Alabama, and a pioneer of sustainable agriculture in the post-World War II era. He also aimed to "generate an agrarian black middle class".
A peanut butter cookie is a type of cookie that is distinguished for having peanut butter as a principal ingredient. The cookie originated in the United States, its development dating back to the 1910s.
Thomas Monroe Campbell (1883–1956) was the first Cooperative Extension Agent in the United States and headed the first Extension Program as a field agent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Well known for his work under the tutelage of Booker T. Washington and peered with George Washington Carver, Campbell was also the winner of the Harmon Award in 1930 for his service in the field of agriculture. He authored of the book The Movable School Goes to the Negro Farmer. He was a nationally known and well respected public servant of the first rank. A bust of Campbell can be found in the Tuskegee University Library.
A common perception is that the birth of Cooperative Extension followed the passage of the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which provided federal funds to land-grant universities to support Extension work. In the formal sense, this is true. Even so, the roots of Cooperative Extension extend as far back as the late 18th century, following the American Revolution, when affluent farmers first began organizing groups to sponsor educational meetings to disseminate useful farming information. In some cases, these lectures were delivered by university professors — a practice that foreshadowed Cooperative Extension work more than a century later.
The George Washington Carver Museum is a museum located in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. It is a part of the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site. The museum, located on the campus of Tuskegee University, is managed by the US National Park Service, with self-guided tours.
Carver Hall is an academic building completed in 1969 at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, to accommodate rapid increases in enrollment. It is named for George Washington Carver, who earned his bachelor's degree from Iowa State University in 1894 and his master's in 1896 and served on the Iowa State faculty. George Washington Carver is best known for his exhaustive development of peanut products akin to peanut butter. A statue of him created by the internationally acclaimed sculptor Christian Petersen is displayed in a courtyard north of the building's lobby, to honor George Washington Carver's lifelong work in science and human relations.
Peanut production in China contributes to the national economy.
Charles Walter Greene was the first credentialed teacher of agriculture at Tuskegee Institute and the second leader of the Agriculture Department at Tuskegee. He was a graduate of Hampton Institute and classmate of Booker T. Washington. He took over as Tuskegee Institute's farm manager in June 1888. The school had mostly trained teachers up until then. George Washington Carver was recruited to the Agriculture faculty in 1896.
James Nathan Calloway was an American agriculturalist. Born in slavery in Tennessee, Calloway graduated from Fisk University before joining the faculty of the Tuskegee Institute. Initially a lecturer in mathematics, he became involved in agricultural science and was appointed manager of the institute's largest farm in 1897. He was selected to lead an expedition to German Togoland in 1900 to promote the production of cotton there. Calloway bred a special strain of the plant suited to local conditions but returned to the United States a year later. The experimental station that he founded remained in use until 1919 and established cotton as a staple crop of the colony. He returned to Tuskegee as farm manager and taught agriculture there until at least 1930.
Walter A. Hill is an American scientist who is Professor and Dean of the College of Agriculture, Environment and Nutrition Sciences at Tuskegee University. In 2016 he was inducted into the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hall of Fame.
George Ruffin Bridgeforth was an American farmer and educator. He was the first African American to attend the University of Massachusetts Amherst, graduating in 1901. He later taught agriculture and directed agricultural operations at the Tuskegee Institute in his home state of Alabama and led the Kansas Industrial and Educational Institute in Topeka. His descendents run a fifth-generation farm in Alabama—the state's largest Black-owned farm.
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